Yale University Astronomy Department Newsletter

Vol. 5 Spring 2014 No. 1 Kenney captures dwarf galaxy in the act of dying Professor Jeff Kenney has found concrete evidence that dwarf galaxies stop forming stars due to the process known as ram pressure stripping.

Kenney and his team of researchers have caught the Virgo Cluster galaxy IC3418 in the act of transforming from a dwarf irregular galaxy into a dwarf elliptical galaxy. The metamor- phosis happens as gas is stripped from the galaxy through ram pressure, a forceful wind that is caused by the collision of the gas in the galaxy with the gas in intracluster space.

With no gas available for star formation, dwarf elliptical galax- ies are considered “dead.” Therefore, Kenney and his team are witnessing the first clear example of a dwarf galaxy in the act of dying.

“We think we’re witnessing a critical stage in the transforma- X-ray image showing hot gas in the Virgo cluster with an enlarged UV image of dwarf galaxy IC3418 sporting tion of a gas-rich dwarf irregular galaxy (SEE DWARF, p. 4) a tail of recently formed stars. J. Kenney and P. Jachym.

Massive black holes alive and well in dwarf galaxies Dwarf galaxies may be small, but astronomers now know that they can hold massive black holes.

Yale astronomer Marla Geha and collaborators have identified more than 100 dwarf galaxies that show signs of hosting mas- sive black holes, a discovery that challenges the idea that they exist only in much bigger galaxies.

“These galaxies are comparable in size to the Magellanic Clouds, dwarf satellite galaxies of the Milky Way,” said Geha, associate professor of astronomy. “Previously, such galaxies were thought to be too small to have such massive black holes.”

Dwarf galaxies are small, faint, low-mass galaxies with rela- tively few stars compared with, say, the Milky Way, Earth’s home galaxy. Black holes are points in space where matter is Depicted here is NGC4395, a low mass galaxy with a known packed so densely that light itself cannot escape; massive black central black hole. Image courtesy of the researchers. holes are an extreme form of black hole. (SEE HOLES, p. 4)

INSIDE THIS ISSUE

Science News 1 Recent Graduates 16 Greetings from the Chair 2 Awards and Honors 18 Department Research Programs and Facilities 6 In Memoriam 19 People 14 Aumni News 20

1 Greetings from the Chair

Looking back on the time since the last Newsletter, it is amazing to see how much has been achieved and how much the department continues to evolve. Among the most visible changes is the renovation of the library and the accompanying increased activity on that side of the hallway. Quite often, most of the new desks are occupied by majors, graduate students, postdocs, and the occasional bemused faculty member. The class- room also got a facelift, along with some much needed improvements behind the scenes. Next in line is a renovation of the kitchen and lounge area; the idea is that this becomes a single open space for informal gatherings and discussions.

We have maintained a very high level of science activity in the department, in large part owing to our outstanding postdocs and graduate students. Several achievements are highlighted in this Newsletter. We also interact a lot with each other, aided by events such as YODA (Yale Overarching Discussion of Astro), ST@Y (Stellar Tea at Yale), and Galaxy Lunch. It is impressive that we have an event or talk nearly every day of the week, and that these events all have dedicated groups of people who ensure their success. Perhaps inspired by these postdoc- and graduate-student-led activities, the faculty have restarted their Friday Scholarship lunches, where they discuss science or other topics such as teaching, mentoring, and applying for grants.

Our computer and telescope facilities continue to be productive, including the twin Keck telescopes which form the back- bone of our private telescope access. We are in the midst of two transitions: we are moving to a more comprehensive and powerful computer cluster, and we are reorienting our 4m-class telescope access. Yale was a founding member of the 3.5m WIYN telescope consortium, but after nearly 24 years of successful use, we found that our scientific priorities had shifted in a different direction. As of April 1, 2014, Yale will no longer be a member of the consortium. Based on the results of a com- prehensive survey of graduate students, postdocs, and faculty, we have shifted our focus in 4m-class science to the Palomar 5m telescope in California, as its instrumentation is an excellent match to our evolving needs.

Sadly, we had to say goodbye to Suzanne Tourtellotte this year. Suzanne passed away in June after a long illness. She ded- icated her career to enabling others to experience the Universe, whether through teaching introductory courses or through the planning and execution of observations for the SMARTS consortium. She will be greatly missed by her SMARTS col- leagues, by the staff, and by everyone who knew her. Charles Bailyn wrote a tribute to her in this issue (SEE p. 19).

Newsletter Editorial Staff

Editor-in-Chief: Pieter van Dokkum Editor: Victoria Misenti Writing: Victoria Misenti Others as credited Design: Victoria Misenti Copy Editor: Emily MacPherson Photography: As credited

Please send your comments and news to:

Editor, Astronomy Newsletter Yale University P.O. Box 208101 New Haven, CT 06520-8101 [email protected] Palomar 5m telescope with adaptive optics laser. Photo by W. S. Kardel. 2 Arce gets foot in the door with early ALMA research Hector Arce is part of a Yale-Universidad de Chile collabo- optical sources. 2) The elevation of ALMA’s site means that ration in star formation that was awarded coveted time for there is less contamination from the atmosphere. 3) The “Cycle 0” on the new Atacama Large Millimeter/submilli- newer technology of ALMA makes it a better and more sen- meter Array (ALMA) in Chile. Arce has also been awarded sitive facility. time for his “Cycle 1” proposals, but his observations have been delayed due to weather and engineering needs. AL- Arce remarked, “ALMA is like putting on new glasses when MA’s superb sensitivity and resolution have made it pos- you know you need a new prescription. Everything becomes sible for Arce to detect features in the observed outflows of much more clear and you can see the details.” Even though protostars much more clearly than previously. his observations only used 16 of the total of 66 antennas that the telescope array will eventually have, Arce believes that Arce and his team used the ALMA time to discover that the results from his first use of the facility “are clear evidence the outflows of a typical protostar in the Gum Nebula are that once completed, this telescope will revolutionize the moving at greater velocities than previously measured, field of star formation.” which leads to a more dramatic impact of the outflow on the star formation environment than astronomers previously The paper presenting Arce’s ALMA “Cycle 0” observations thought occurred. If the observed source is representative of is titled ALMA Observations of the HH 46/47 Molecular Out- outflows in general, Arce’s research indicates that protostel- flow and it appeared in the September 2013 issue of The As- lar outflows could provide the energy to sustain turbulence trophysical Journal. Co-authors are Diego Mardones of the in star-forming clouds and help in dispersing the gas around University of Chile, Stuartt Corder of ALMA, Guido Garay newly formed stars. of the Universidad de Chile, Alberto Noriega-Crespo of the California Institute of Technology, and Alejandro C. Raga of The ALMA observations additionally allowed Arce’s team Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. The observa- to discover more about the structure of the outflow launch- tions were supported by funding from the National Science ing mechanism and to find evidence that the outflow and Foundation. disk accretion are both episodic. For ALMA's “Cycle 2,” Arce has collaborated on a number ALMA is superior to previous radio telescopes for several of proposals on a wide range of topics including studying reasons: 1) ALMA is in the Atacama desert—one of the dri- star-forming cores and the early stages of star formation in est places on Earth—so it is relatively free from the water nearby clouds, the impact of outflows from massive proto- vapor that can obstruct radio waves just as clouds obstruct stars on their surroundings, and a survey of protoplanetary disks in the Orion nebula cluster.

New Yonsei-Yale Isochrones and models available The Yonsei-Yale (Y2) Isochrones have been developed by a collaboration of researchers at Yale (led by Professor Pierre Demarque) and Yonsei University since 2001 and have re- cently been updated with a new set of stellar tracks and iso- chrones focusing on low mass stars (down to 0.1 Msun).

According to Professor Sukyoung Yi of Yonsei University, “Isochrones are currently the best tools for measuring the ages of star clusters and fundamental building blocks for galaxy population synthesis.” Demarque added that “they should be useful to a lot of people, including both stellar population and exoplanet researchers.”

The latest Y2 Isochrones are available for download on the Yale website http://www.astro.yale.edu/demarque/yyiso. html. A paper that accompanied the release, which was led by Federica Spada with Demarque, Yong Cheol Kim and Alison Sills, was published in the October 2013 volume of Comparison between models using the new Y2 (in red) and other sets of publicly available tracks and iso- The Astrophysical Journal. chrones (in blue). Figure from Spada et al, 2013.

3 Ram pressure stripping quenches star formation (DWARF, from p.1) into a gas-poor it out the car window as you drive, Kenney additionally noted that dead dwarf elliptical galaxy—the depletion the wind caused by the car’s mo- dwarf elliptical galaxies are found al- of its lifeblood,” said Kenney. “Until tion through the air will blow away most exclusively in dense regions— now, there has been no clear example the popcorn but leave the denser un- clusters, groups or near a larger galaxy. of this transformation happening.” popped kernels in your hand,” Ken- This is consistent with ram pressure ney said. “This is like the gas clouds in stripping quenching the star formation IC3418 was stripped quickly and is al- galaxies being blown out of the galaxy in dwarf ellipticals. most completely out of gas. The core of by the wind of cluster gas, while the IC3418 stopped making stars between denser stars remain behind.” Kenney and his team used optical im- 200 and 300 million years ago. Prior to aging from the WIYN telescope, UV quenching, a strong starburst occurred Most of the stars in the outer tail have imaging from the GALEX space tele- that formed about 10% of the stars in velocities which exceed the escape scope, and optical spectroscopy from the galaxy. But the galaxy is now gen- speed and will join intracluster space. both of the Keck telescopes to obtain erating a spectacular one-sided 17-kpc- Some of the stars in the inner tail are their results. length tail with UV-bright knots likely bound; they will fall back into (mostly from linear, parallel streams the galaxy forming halo streams that “It’s gratifying to find a clear example of young stars), linear stellar features, differ in properties from tidal halo of an important process in galaxy evo- and head-tail features nicknamed “fire- streams. lution,” said Kenney. “I enjoy digging balls.” through evidence to assemble a story Neither H-alpha nor HI emission are about what happens to galaxies. I’ve The fireballs are created when ram detected in the main body of the gal- come to think of myself as an interga- pressure pushes the gas away from axy, despite structure in optical images lactic forensic pathologist—someone the galaxy and new stars are formed resembling star forming regions and who studies the bodies of galaxies, in the gas outside of the galaxy. The spiral arms. seeking evidence of traumatic events wind keeps the star-forming “head” responsible for the present state of the of gas moving forward, but does not Deep optical images show a relative- galaxy.” affect the newly-formed stars, which ly undisturbed stellar body and no remain behind in a “tail.” In IC3418, smooth stellar component to the tail, Kenney is leading a paper about IC3418 this effect can be seen by the fact that only clusters and streams of young that has appeared in The Astrophysical the only H-alpha emission arises from stars, which are properties inconsistent Journal entitled: Transformation of a a few HII regions in the galaxy’s tail, with a tidal interaction. Virgo Cluster Dwarf Irregular Galaxy the brightest of which are at the heads by Ram Pressure Stripping: IC3418 and of the fireballs, whose stellar tails point The fact that the tail is only on one side its Fireballs. Co-authors include Hugh back towards the galaxy. of the galaxy also rules out the possi- H. Crowl, ’06 PhD; William Dague; bility that star formation in the galaxy Yale Professor Marla Geha; and Pavel “If you hold popcorn and un-popped could be expelling all of the gas from Jachym. kernels of corn in your hand and stick the galaxy. Massive black holes reside in dwarf galaxies

(HOLES, from p.1) Geha and collaborators at the National The research also offers new evidence for the origin of su- Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) and Princeton Uni- permassive black holes, researchers said. versity presented their findings during the American Astro- nomical Society’s annual meeting in Washington, D.C., the The team’s work is based on data from the Sloan Digital Sky week of Jan. 6, 2013. The work was highlighted during a Jan. Survey. 8 press conference. Amy Reines of NRAO is lead author of the team’s research The scientists said that patterns of light emission from many paper, Dwarf Galaxies with Optical Signatures of Active of the galaxies suggest the presence of massive black holes. Massive Black Holes. Jenny Greene of Princeton and Geha The black holes in the study are about 100,000 times the are co-authors. Further detail is also available on the NRAO mass of Earth’s Sun—massive, but vastly less dense than website. black holes seen in larger galaxies. This article was written by Eric Gershon, Yale University.

4 Stella Offner, Hubble Fellow, simulates star formation

Gas velocity in a simulation in which evolved B stars are launch- Gas velocity in a simulation of a forming protostar at 0.5 Myr. ing spherical winds within a molecular cloud. As the winds (red) The mass outflow, which is higher velocity, is highlighted in red. interact with the cloud, they slow down (blue) and lose their sym- At this time, most of the initial gas has been accreted or dispersed, metry. S. Offner. but some very turbulent gas (blue) remains. S. Offner.

Stella Offner, a Hubble Postdoctoral Fellow at Yale, works on large-scale simulations of how low mass stars, like our sun, form. Most recently, she has been looking into the effects of feedback from low mass stars, especially how these stars affect their environment during star formation.

Offner is studying several environmental factors of low mass stars during star formation, including their ability to: 1) heat their environment (the calculations for this include radiative transfer) and 2) launch protostellar outflows (she uses a sub- grid model that describes mass and energy being lost as a function of protostar mass). She also looks at how isotropic winds from older B stars shape the star-forming cloud and inject energy.

Offner uses a grid-based, adaptive code developed at Berkeley and Lawrence Livermore called ORION that is able to follow problems like the collapse and formation of a star easily. The code was originally created to model nuclear explosions, but since the gas dynamics of explosions and forming stars is similar, it was able to be adapted for use by astronomers.

In addition to modeling, Offner makes synthetic observations (e.g. molecular and dust emission maps) and compares them with observations such as those produced by Yale Professor Hector Arce.

Emission maps of three different molecules as might be observed at very high resolution with ALMA. S. Offner.

5 SMARTS Consortium Yale leaves WIYN, Inc., approves new 3-year MOU joins Palomar 200-inch The SMARTS Consortium, founded by Yale Professor Charles Bailyn in 2001, has re-formed itself as "SMARTS3." The Consortium recently executed a 3-year contract to con- tinue to operate the small telescopes at CTIO (0.9m, 1.3m and 1.5m) from October 2013 through September 2016. Yale's 1.0m telescope is not included in the contract; it is currently closed to science operations due to a shortage of funding.

SMARTS3 differs from its predecessors in that the manage- ment of the telescopes has now been split. Yale still admin- istratively manages and schedules the 1.3m and the 1.5m, but the 0.9m is now fully administered by Todd Henry at Georgia State University.

The SMARTS 0.9m is operated in user mode only; the 1.3m and 1.5m are both operated in service mode with a queue The Palomar 200-inch Hale Telescope. Photo courtesy of CalTech. scheduling system. The instruments currently available at SMARTS are CFCCD, an optical imager (0.9m); ANDI- Yale was one of the founding members of the WIYN tele- CAM, a dual-channel optical and IR imager (1.3m); CHI- scope consortium, which was set up in 1990 as a partner- RON, a high-resolution Echelle spectrometer (1.5m); and ship between The University of Wisconsin-Madison, Indi- SIMON, an infrared spectrometer that can also be used in ana University, Yale University, and the National Optical imaging mode (1.5m). Astronomy Observatory. The consortium has operated the 3.5m WIYN telescope on Kitt Peak for the past 24 years. SMARTS3 is somewhat unique in that any member of the Yale’s private access to WIYN has been a key resource for astronomical research community is welcome to purchase the Astronomy department, and has resulted in many PhD any amount of observing time from SMARTS3 directly, theses over the years. as long as available time exists. All Yale Astronomy De- partment members have access to the suite of telescopes The needs of the astronomers have evolved over time, par- through a departmental membership, which also allows ticularly in the period after Yale gained access to the twin Yale a seat on the management council of SMARTS3. Keck telescopes in Hawaii. Recognizing that WIYN was not as central to the research in the Astronomy and Phys- ics departments as it used to be, we decided to review how well our 4m access matched our needs. A comprehensive survey among graduate students, postdocs, and faculty ul- timately led to the decision to enter a partnership with the Palomar 5m telescope in California and to withdraw from the WIYN consortium.

Since February 2014, Yale has a 1/8 share of the observing time on the Palomar telescope. The combination of Palo- mar and Keck is powerful, as the instruments on the two facilities are well matched.

The first round of proposals for the Palomar telescope showed that the Yale astronomy community has great in- terest in this new facility, and many science results are ex- pected to come from this resource in the coming years.

The SMARTS 1.5m telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Pieter van Dokkum contributed to the writing of this article. Observatory (CTIO) in Chile. Photo by V. Misenti.

6 Undergraduate class takes field trip to Arecibo

Professor Marla Geha's Astrophysics Research Methods course (ASTR 255) sent 17 undergraduates to Puerto Rico for its first annual Fall Break research trip to Arecibo Obser- vatory, the world's largest single-aperture radio telescope (305m).

The group also included two Yale faculty members and two graduate student Teaching Fellows and was hosted by Fernando Camilo, the Director of Astronomy at the Obser- vatory. Camilo gave the group a private tour of the tele- scope, which included walking on the catwalk suspended 150 meters above the radio dish (which itself is suspended just above the ground in the middle of the rainforest) that is inaccessible to most visitors.

The students successfully designed and observed their own science projects on the telescope. Upon their return to New An aerial view of the Arecibo Observatory. Haven, the students analyzed their data for their final proj- ects.

The ASTR 255 group stayed on-site in the astronomer dorms for two nights. Because Arecibo is a radio telescope, cell phone use is prohibited, which in itself was a remarkable experience for the students.

The Arecibo telescope has been featured in several movies, including the classic Contact and James Bond's GoldenEye.

Portions of this article were contributed by Marla Geha. Images courtesy of the participants.

Ted Papalexopoulous, ‘15 and Cyril Zhang, ‘15 on the catwalk.

Above: some of the participants pose for a group shot in front of the Arecibo dish. Photo by V. Misenti.

Right: Mariona Badenas, ‘16 and Aquiel Warner, ‘15 observing in the Arecibo control room.

7 Yale astronomy undergraduate This past summer, the Astronomy Department was daily buzzing with the activities of undergraduate researchers working on such astronomical topics as exoplanets, galaxy evolution and blazars. The students were advised by Professors Debra Fischer, Louise Edwards, and Meg Urry

DEBRA FISCHER’S GROUP

When describing her group, Debra Fischer said, “This was an energetic and cohesive group! The students worked Monday through Friday. As part of the weekly routine, they met twice a week to review the latest astronomy papers posted to astro- ph; they met every Friday for a catered group lunch; and they met once a week for problem solving and computer clinics. The mentors for the students included Dr. Tabetha Boyajian (Yale), Dr. Ji Wang (Yale), Dr. Tom Barclay (NASA Ames Re- search Center), Dr. Ron Gilliland (Kepler Scientist) and Professor Debra Fischer. Mentors met regularly with the students. Outside of the work time, the group organized a trip to the Hayden Planetarium in NYC and met for movie night at the Leitner Family Observatory and Planetarium.” Ari Brill, ‘15 searched for microlensing events in the Kepler data. A small number of stars should have evolved binary companions, and when these objects transit they will also bend the light path of the primary star so that a brightening is observed. Ari is flattening the light curves and running a periodogram analysis to try to find these events.

Cory Combs, ‘14 followed up on stars that were found to transit by Planet Hunters and were added late in the Kepler mission (so the usual pipeline analysis has not been carried out by the Kepler team). When Kepler Mission specialist Tom Barclay visited the group from NASA Ames this summer, he and Cory worked on modeling these new planet candidates.

Miranda Kephart, ‘15 worked with postdoctoral fellow Ta- betha Boyajian to model bolometric corrections for stars. This information is important for understanding the energy out- put of stars and for determining the temperature of orbiting planets.

Charles Margossian, ‘15 has been studying correlations between planet radii and the age of the host star as well as the orbital distance from the host star. The planets were either detected by ground-based surveys or by the Kepler Mission. He has identified several very young stars that host planets that have particularly inflated radii.

Michael Mossman is a senior high school student from Rye Country Day School. He helped to build some new iodine cells (used for wavelength calibration for exoplanet searches) and he designed an optical setup to evaluate the throughput and surface scattering of the cell windows. He finished up that task quickly and is now measuring the focal ratio degradation and throughput of optical fibers.

Ted Papalexopoulous, ‘15 searched for “trojan planets” in the Kepler data. These are two planets with the same orbital path and orbital period, but at different points on the orbital circle. He also worked on the analysis of alpha Centauri spectra obtained with the CHIRON spectrograph.

Victoria Parrish is a high school student who is learning to model transiting planets in the Kepler data.

Alyssa Picard, ‘14 modeled Kepler light curves with only one or two planetary transits. The transits were detected by Planet Hunters and these objects are especially interesting because the planets are in wide and potentially habitable orbits.

Will Rutter is an MIT sophomore who is developing an instrument that produces an extremely narrow line from the hyper- fine transition of rubidium. Doppler broadening has been calibrated out and the line width is only due to “natural broaden- ing” - a consequence of the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle. 8 2013 summer research projects

In addition to daily working on their research projects, the students were priv- ileged to attend a field trip to New York City, where they were given a tour of the American Museum of Natural History and its Hayden Planetarium.

LOUISE EDWARDS’ GROUP

In addition to their research, Professor Edwards’ group was excited to obtain a backdoor tour of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, meeting astronomers and summer students who were working there.

Hannah Alpert, ‘15 observed with Professor Edwards for three nights at WIYN in Arizona using SparsePak at the end of the Spring 2013 semester. Through the summer, Hannah worked on reducing and analyzing this data to figure out how the most massive galaxies in the local universe build up and evolve. She also went to Leiden, in the Netherlands, for a week to work with a collaborator to obtain ages of galaxies. Hannah was one of our STARS summer research fellows and funding for her research came from the NASA national space grant consortium.

Vasilije Dobrosavljevic, ‘16 is working on some of the data that Hannah Alpert took (see above) to look at star formation rates of galaxies. Vasilije also volunteered at public nights at the Leitner Family Observatory and Planetarium. Vasilije’s funding came from a Yale freshman research grant.

Renita Heng, ‘16 was also a STARS summer research fellow. She worked measuring the shapes of galaxies in a supercluster and found that those that appear to be falling into the cluster are more disturbed than elsewhere. In addition, Renita volun- teered at public nights at the Leitner Family Observatory and Planetarium.

Eric Ho, ‘16 is a computer science major who built a 3D-rendering of the galaxy cluster Abell 1763, available here: http:// www.astro.yale.edu/edwards/Rendering/awesome.html. Eric’s funding came from a Yale freshman research grant.

Additionally, Brooke Lamell, ‘16 was a STARS summer re- search fellow who worked with Professor Meg Urry and the Yale SMARTS Blazar Team on optical and near-infrared photometric monitoring of Fermi gamma ray-bright blazars. Within the project goal of constructing multiwavelength light curves to track the variable radiation of each blazar within the experiment sample, Brooke worked on the calibration of the team’s luminosity measurements for the Two Micron All Sky Survey stars within each viewing field. She used five years of data from the SMARTS 1.3-meter telescope in Chile to produce standardized magnitude values for all the study’s infrared comparison stars in both J and K bands. She was then able to constrain the error values in these calculations due to having potentially variable stars as standards, instru- ment limitations, and inherent measurement challenges.

This article includes text written by Debra Fischer. Photos taken in New York City courtesy of the undergraduates.

9 Astronomy High Performance Computing update In the Fall 2011 issue of the Astronomy Department Newslet- no longer have their own dedicated machine, Yale has given ter, we reported that Yale astronomers were benefitting from the astronomers high priority access to about 1,000 cores of the use of Yale's High Performance Computing (HPC) clus- Omega and significantly better access to storage space in the ters, especially from a machine called Bulldog M dedicated Omega system than they previously had. The priority access for use by Yale astronomers. mechanism delivers the resources that the Yale as- Bulldog M has been used ex- tronomers require nearly tensively by Yale astronomers immediately, while facili- for their science. For example, tating more efficient use Daisuke Nagai’s group has used of resources overall. Bulldog M for computational modeling of galaxy cluster for- The astronomers have mation. By following the complex also benefitted from a interplay between dark matter, 2012 National Science stars, and gas, these simulations Foundation grant to Yale not only helped improve our un- to build a better, faster derstanding of the formation and network dedicated to evolution of galaxy clusters, but movement of large data- also provided the independent sets required in scientific confirmation of the cosmic accel- research. When it is com- eration using galaxy clusters as probes. Nikhil Padmanab- plete in mid-2014, it will allow Yale research collaborators han’s group has also used Bulldog M to analyze and inter- from all around the world to access the data produced at pret datasets from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Through this Yale in a manner that was not possible previously. work, Padmanabhan has measured the distances to galaxies more than six billion light-years away to an unprecedented Nagai said, “I am looking forward to using the Omega clus- accuracy of just two percent. These exquisite measurements ter, which should enable astronomers to address the next big have placed new constraints on the properties of Dark Ener- challenges in the era of data-driven science… it is always gy. Other users include the research groups of Sarbani Basu, challenging doing cutting-edge research." He continued, Priya Natarajan and Frank van den Bosch. Bulldog M has "the reason we [at Yale] are doing cutting edge research is been the workhorse for some of the major scientific advanc- because the other institutions are still struggling with these es made by Yale astronomers in recent years. issues and have not managed to do what we have done."

The processors and storage on Bulldog M are now roughly Because Yale astronomers will likely need more comput- four years old, and such systems usually only have a life- ing power and storage for their research into the future, the span of about five years. To continue to meet their scientific astronomers are working closely with Yale’s HPC team to needs, Yale astronomers have recently moved to Omega, a make sure that the University can apply for grants to sup- newer, faster system that is available for use by all of the port acquisition of the next generation of advanced comput- members of Yale's Faculty of Arts and Sciences. (When ers. Omega was purchased, it was ranked number 146 among the top 500 supercomputers in the world and the top supercom- Portions of this article were contributed by Daisuke Nagai. puter in the Ivy League.) Even though the Yale astronomers Photo by Z. Gorman of the Yale Daily News.

What Does a Black Hole Look Like? Professor Charles Bailyn has recently published a new black holes to describe how astronomers are observing textbook, What Does a Black Hole Look Like? with Princeton these enigmatic objects and developing a remarkably de- University Press. A cutting-edge introduction for under- tailed picture of what they look like and how they interact graduates and others who have some knowledge of intro- with their surroundings. In addition, Bailyn discusses the ductory college-level physics to a subject that was once on possibility of observing theoretically-predicted phenome- the border between physics and science fiction, this book na such as gravitational waves, wormholes, and Hawking shows how black holes are becoming routine objects of radiation. empirical scientific study. The textbook will be available in both hardcover and elec- In his book, Bailyn goes behind the theory and physics of tronic forms.

10 Yale’s Bright Star Catalog integral in Google project Yale's Bright Star Catalog recently played an important role in the creation of the Google project 100,000 Stars (see http:// workshop.chromeexperiments.com/stars/). This project, de- veloped by the Google Data Arts team, consists of an interac- tive website that visualizes the stellar neighborhood. Users can zoom in from a view of the Galaxy to a close-up image of the Sun, passing thousands of stars, the Oort Cloud, and the orbits of planets in the Solar System. In addition to freely zooming between galactic, stellar, and planetary scales, users can also opt to take a programmed tour of 100,000 Stars that displays educational facts about stellar distances, types, and colors.

100,000 Stars actually consists of 119,617 stars, 87 of which are individually named on the website and have accompanying information and images. Google engineers relied on three sources to accurately map the positions of the stars: Yale's Bright Star Catalog (YBS), the Hipparcos catalog, and the Gliese-Jahreiss catalog. The YBS is a catalog of the positions, photometry, proper motions, and parallaxes of approximately 9,100 stars with apparent magnitudes brighter than +6.5. Dorrit Hoffleit, a Professor of Astronomy at Yale from 1956-1975, compiled and edited the YBS.

An instrumental score by Sam Hulick entitled "In a Strange Land" accompanies 100,000 Stars; users may recognize Mr. Hu- lick's work from the popular video games Mass Effect and Baldur's Gate.

100,000 Stars represents a powerful visualization of astronomical data and an effective way of sharing the results of scien- tific research with the public. "As you explore this experiment, we hope you share our wonder for how large the Galaxy really is," said Aaron Koblin, Creative Director of Google's Data Arts Team.

This article was written by Katherine Kornei, B.S. ‘06. Screen capture from 100,000 Stars application credit: Google.

Astrometry for Astrophysics: Methods, Models and Applications

Yale Astronomy Professor William F. (Bill) van Altena is the editor of a recent text- book published by Cambridge University Press called Astrometry for Astrophysics: Methods, Models and Applications. The textbook is intended as a one-semester intro- duction to the science of astrometry for advanced undergraduates, beginning gradu- ate students and researchers in related fields.

Astrometry for Astrophysics covers many aspects of astrometry, ranging from the nec- essary mathematical background to its latest applications in a variety of currently interesting astronomical topics.

van Altena hopes that the students’ exposure at an introductory level will lead to more advanced study of this exciting field. For researchers in other fields, the goal is to provide sufficient background to understand the opportunities and limitations of astrometry.

Astrometry for Astrophysics is the result of advice from many individuals in the worldwide astrometric community. The 28 chapters were written by 28 co-authors from 15 different countries.

11 Astronomy Library renovations create new study space The Astronomy Library was recently renovated to create an improved study space for department members and visitors.

Librarian Kim Monocchi worked with Richard Larson to discriminately curate the size of the library's collection from 40,000 printed volumes, reducing it to its current size of about 17,000 volumes. The newly available space allowed for the addition of a new conference table in the rear of the library that is able to be reserved for meetings. In addition, the existing study space was completely transformed with new furniture that is more amenable to both individual and group study.

The undergraduate computer laboratory was also trans- planted to the library and has become especially busy dur- ing the summer research season.

Monocchi said that the renovations, which included renova- tions to the circulation desk, have made her more accessible to users who require assistance. She said of the renovated library, "It is warm, exciting, a great atmosphere and it func- tions well." She also remarked, "I am no longer surrounded by an orange glow!"

The renovation started in August of 2012 and was com- pleted in February of 2013. Standard Builders was the con- struction company. Clancey Cullen moved and shifted all of the books. Svigals & Partners were the architects. The millwork, custom-made cabinets, and end panels were done by Orion Manufacturing, LLC. Photos by V. Robalino. The Astronomy Library, then and now by Kim Monocchi, Librarian

When I stood in the middle of the Astronomy Library in 1993, it felt like being transported back into the '70s, but it also felt like home. Surrounded by orange, vinyl-upholstered chairs standing on worn, orange tweed carpeting, peeling paint and the smell of old books, I knew I wanted to spend my working days here. Many of the students felt the same warmth sur- rounded by this sea of orange and a few shared that they felt the library, in all of its orange glory, was the nicest space in the department.

Today, the library surrounds visitors in warm wood tones, with a study space, wireless internet, a workspace with com- puter access for undergraduate Astronomy majors and a space for small group meetings. Of course, there is more to be done, but the only place you may see a hint of that old, orange glow is in the stacks covering the bound journals.

It is a wonderful feeling when department members, [who have been] here longer than I, say, “I’m impressed.” May this li- brary continue to be considered one of the nicest spaces in the department. It was a pleasure to be part of this renovation and its evolution into something more than it once was.

12 Astronomy classroom gets “face lift” and new air conditioning Yale University has implemented a global "Science Hill Plan" (SHP) to improve the quality of Yale's research and teaching facilities and to enhance contacts within and among depart- ments.

As part of this plan, many of the classrooms on Yale's Sci- ence Hill have been renovated, including the Astronomy classroom (JWG 263).

The construction in JWG 263 began immediately after class- es ended in May 2013 and finished at the beginning of July 2013, right before the Yale Summer Session courses began. The new furniture, which is easily mobile, did not arrive until the end of August, but was in place before the new academic year began.

A “behind-the-scenes” focus of the JWG renovation was to upgrade the air conditioning so that it is now quieter and functions well. The rest of the renovation included long- overdue cosmetic changes such as new carpet, new furni- ture, and a fresh coat of paint. The orientation of the class- room was also changed, and a series of nesting whiteboards and blackboards were installed on the same plane as the projector screen.

Standard Builders was the contractor for the renovation. Photo (top right) by V. Robalino.

Natives and the Stars at Leitner Family Observatory and Planetarium On November 29, 2012, about 60 people attended a unique Yale at the time of the program, and all were in attendance. event at the Leitner Family Observatory and Planetarium Bernadett also flew in two members of the tribe from Ari- (LFOP) called "Natives and the Stars." zona: Brian Hendricks, who cooked a delicious traditional meal for all attendees (see photo, above), and Michael Enis, The program was initiated by Maya Bernadett, a member who regaled the audience with traditional song and dance of the Tohono O'Odham Nation in Arizona who had been relating to astronomy and the world-view of the Nation. working at Yale, and focused on the relationship between the Nation and astronomy. In addition, there were two presentations from the astrono- my department. First, Victoria Misenti gave a presentation The Tohono O'Odham own the land on which Kitt Peak about the history and unique features of the WIYN telescope National Observatory is situated. In addition to Bernadett, and its organization, interweaving anecdotes about the in- there were two other members of the Nation affiliated with teractions between astronomers and the Tohono O'Odham at WIYN and Kitt Peak throughout history. Second, Pro- fessor Marla Geha gave a talk about the science that Yale astronomers were currently doing on Kitt Peak.

The attendees were invited to observe with LFOP’s tele- scopes at the end of the night. Faithful LFOP volunteer Dave Noble assisted with observing.

The Natives and the Stars event was co-hosted by the As- tronomy Department, the Native American Cultural Center, the Lamar Center for the Study of Frontiers and Borders, and the Intercultural Affairs Committee. Photos by D. Noble.

13 P E O P L E Louise Edwards joins Yale Astronomy Faculty The astronomy department welcomed Dr. Louise Edwards to the faculty as a Lecturer in July 2012. Prior to that, she was an Assistant Professor of Physics at Mount Allison Uni- versity. She has also held postdoctoral positions at the California Institute of Technology’s Infrared Processing and Analysis Center and at Trent University. She received her PhD in Physics from Laval University in Quebec, Canada in 2007.

While at Yale, Edwards is teaching several courses, primarily for undergraduates. She also assists at the Leitner Family Observa- tory and Planetarium. Her research focus is in the formation and evolution of galaxies in various environments. She is particularly interested in the cores and infall regions of rich galaxy clusters.

In 2002, Edwards was pictured on a Canadian stamp. In her free time, she enjoys watching films and attending local music concerts. Photo courtesy of L. Edwards. Stamp image credit: http://data2.collectionscanada.ca/ap/s/pos_b/posb1067.jpg

Yale University Library hires new research support librarian for physical sciences

If you come to the Astronomy Department’s second floor foyer at 4pm on Thursday after- noons, you will probably have a scintillating conversation with Kayleigh Bohemier, the new librarian at the Center for Science and Social Science Information (CSSSI) who supports the astronomy, geology, geophysics and physics communities at Yale.

Bohemier is no stranger to astronomy—she minored in astronomy as an undergraduate at Smith College before obtaining her graduate degree in library science with a focus in eScience Librarianship at Syracuse University. In addition, she was an intern with the Har- vard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics’ Astrophysics Data System—otherwise known as ADS—where she worked on an ontology for a semantic literature search interface, designed a workflow for mapping astronomer-provided target names to canonical astronomical object names in SIMBAD, and collaborated on ObsCore data ingestion into the semantic interface.

Bohemier has set up a useful guide to astronomy resources (one among many useful guides for scientific research) on her library website, below: http://guides.library.yale.edu/profile/kayleigh-bohemier.

Personally, Bohemier enjoys cooking, yoga and science fiction. Photo courtesy of K. Bohemier.

Class of 2013 Senior Thesis Projects

Farris Gillman Evaluating the Orbital Parameters of UW LMi (advisor: Debra Fischer) Margaret Lazzarini Seeing through the Clouds: Determining the Intrinsic Structure of AGN in the Swift BAT Sample (advisor: Meg Urry) Zak Kaplan Instrumentation for Exoplanet Detection (advisor: Debra Fischer) Casey Rhyne Simulations of the PIXeY detector (advisor: Dan McKinsey) Ilya Uts Exploring the Phases and Densities of Water up to 1 TPa and 24000 K (advisor: Debra Fischer)

14 P E O P L E Yale and Chile: Spotlight on Adele Plunkett, Fulbright Scholar Graduate student Adele Plunkett, GRD '15 took some time away from New Haven to spend eighteen months—nine months on her Fulbright Scholarship and the other nine through her NSF fellowship—studying astronomy in Chile. Plunkett said that the Fulbright Scholarship enhanced her cultural experience while in Chile, but the fact that the Yale- University de Chile (U de Chile) collaboration exists facili- tated her ability to be connected to astronomy while she was there.

The Fulbright Scholarship is a program of the Department of State that facilitates exchanges between the United States and other countries through grant funding. Plunkett's grant was to enable her to complete a research project with Diego Mardones, a professor at the U de Chile and a close collabo- rator of Plunkett's advisor at Yale, Professor Hector Arce.

While Plunkett was not enrolled at the U de Chile, she did Adele Plunkett visits the ALMA antennas at 5000m elevation on audit one of Mardones' classes, and she participated in the the Chajnantor Plateau in northern Chile. Photo courtesy of A. life of the department in general. Not being enrolled gave Plunkett. her the freedom to pursue other astronomical endeavors, and, for the first four months Plunkett was in Chile, she par- er observatories in Chile. She observed for Chilean observ- ticipated in commissioning projects at ALMA. ing time at the APEX observatory, was able to visit the VLT, and served as a substitute observer and telescope operator The additional nine months that Plunkett spent in Chile for SMARTS. gave her the time she needed to apply for her own ALMA observing proposal and to gain observing experience at oth- Plunkett especially enjoyed that Chile seemed to be a "pro- fessional hotbed of astronomy." Experts from all over the world go there to live or work for short amounts of time and there are a lot of international collaborations. Plunkett said it was "fun to be in the middle of it… sitting in the control room and hearing four different languages all at once and thinking about…these are the experts in what I do and hope- fully I'll be meeting them again elsewhere."

In addition to Plunkett, there were 11 other students with Fulbright research projects living in Santiago. Plunkett learned from these students that, in addition to astronomy, Chile is also the "hotbed" for studying many other topics, including sea life, earthquakes and human rights issues.

The Fulbright program encourages its participants to inte- grate into the community and society and to experience life outside one's research project. Plunkett travelled a lot to ex- plore the country on weekends, and she enjoyed Santiago's Adele Plunkett on a hiking trip with two friends and fellow Ful- prime location for hiking, biking, skiing and other fun ex- brighters in the Andes mountains near Santiago. Photo courtesy of treme outdoor sports. In the latter part of her stay, Plunkett A. Plunkett. became involved with triathlons.

15 RECENT ASTRON OMY GRADUATES Pedro Capelo, ‘12 PhD Currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Astronomy at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Dissertation: Theoretical Investigations on the Dark Matter and Gas Content of Large Spheroidal Systems (advisors: Paolo Coppi and Priyamvada Natarajan)

The goal of my thesis work was to study the gas and dark matter content of large spheroidal systems from a theoretical point of view and to narrow the discrepancy between existing theo- retical models and observed phenomenology in these massive structures. The results include observationally-calibrated theoretical prescriptions for early-type galaxies, groups and clus- ters of galaxies: I have weighed in on the robustness of the lens-redshift test for constraining cosmological and galaxy evolution parameters, utilizing the redshift distribution of galaxy lenses in known gravitational lens systems; produced a gravitational potential profile that accounts for the contribution of stellar matter in systems where its effect is appreciable and presented a new analytic formulation for the equilibrium gas density profile of early-type gal- axies; and developed a novel, particularly flexible, model to constrain the gas and dark matter properties of groups and clusters of galaxies, by comparing X-ray scaling relations to theoretical expectations, obtained assuming that the gas is in hydrostatic equilibrium with the dark matter and follows a polytropic relation.

Rachel Bezanson, ‘13 PhD Currently a Hubble Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Arizona. Dissertation: Ten Billion Years of Growth: Massive Galaxy Evolution from Structures and Dynamics (advisor: Pieter van Dokkum)

Once thought to be relics of a much earlier epoch, the most massive local galaxies are red and dead ellipticals, with little ongoing star formation or organized rotation. In the last decade, ob- servations of their assumed progenitors have demonstrated that billions of years ago, massive galaxies were more compact and morphologically different, possibly with more disklike struc- tures. The details of this observed evolution can place constraints on the physical processes that have driven massive galaxy evolution through cosmic time. The work presented in this thesis provides observational constraints on the dynamical and structural evolution of mas- sive galaxies since z~1.5-2. Using a variety of photometric and spectroscopic surveys, including OBEY, SDSS, NMBS, and UDS, I (I) describe the structural evolution of massive galaxies by directly comparing their density profiles at z ~ 2 and lo- cally, (II) quantify and model the number density evolution of galaxies as a function of velocity dispersion since z ~ 1.5, (III) present deep spectroscopic studies of massive galaxy dynamics at z ~ 1.5 and z ~ 0.8, and (IV) tie together the evolution of both galaxy structures and dynamics, showing that massive galaxies grow within the mass fundamental plane throughout the last 10 billion years. Overall, these results provide strong evidence for inside-out growth, minimal, but non-negligible, dynamical evolution and efficient quenching of massive galaxies since z ~ 2. Yale Astronomy undergraduate class of 2013

Ilya Uts Casey Rhyne Farris Gillman

Margaret Lazzarini Zak Kaplan

16 RECENT ASTRON OMY GRADUATES Brooke Simmons, ‘12 PhD Currently a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Oxford. Dissertation: Black Hole Growth and Host Galaxy Co-Evolution Over 8 Billion Years of Cosmic Time (advisor: Meg Urry)

Although much progress has been made in the investigation of the co-evolution of black holes and galaxies, the nature of AGN accretion triggers and AGN-host feedback remain open ques- tions. Using samples of hard-X-ray-selected, moderate-luminosity AGN and their host galax- ies from 0.25 < z < 2.67 in the GOODS deep multi-wavelength survey fields, this thesis assesses the growth rates and histories of these black holes and uses their host galaxy morphologies and colors to test the applicability of established quasar-triggering models to lower-powered AGN. The analysis includes simulations of over 50,000 AGN+host galaxy images to assess the reliability of AGN-host decomposition, as well as a new technique to separate the spectral energy distribution of an obscured AGN from its dominant host galaxy.

Because major mergers both form bulges and destroy disks, this result indicates that models requiring major mergers to trigger the growth of black holes do not describe the majority of AGN. The range of both black hole growth rates and host galaxy colors and morphologies in the sample imply that secular processes are important to the growth of moderate-lumi- nosity AGN, which collectively comprise a substantial fraction of the overall black hole growth in the universe.

Tomer Tal, ‘12 PhD Currently a NSF Postdoctoral Fellow at UC Santa Cruz. Dissertation: Feeding a Leviathan: The Growth of Massive Red Galaxies Through Minor Mergers (advisor: Pieter van Dokkum)

When galaxies collide with the most massive elliptical galaxies in the universe, their stars are torn and get absorbed into the stellar body of their massive hosts. Such interactions, called “minor” mergers, may have a crucial contribution to the growth of massive ellipticals as these galaxies do not otherwise form stars of their own. In this dissertation, we study the impor- tance of minor mergers to the growth of massive elliptical galaxies. We analyze data from the SDSS and OBEY surveys to quantify the rate of minor mergers and their contribution to the size and mass growth of nearby ellipticals.

Kate Whitaker, ‘12 PhD Currently a NASA Postdoctoral Fellow at Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD. Dissertation: A Cosmic Metamorphosis: The quenching of star-formation in massive galaxies over the last 11 billion years (advisor: Pieter van Dokkum)

Nearby galaxies exhibit a bimodal color distribution, whereas actively-star-forming galaxies have blue colors and quiescent galaxies have red colors. It is generally thought that red gal- axies arise from blue galaxies when star formation is quenched. However, the origin of this color bimodality remains unknown. Furthermore, it is not well understood how actively-star- forming galaxies quench and migrate to form the well-defined color-mass relation, known as the “red sequence.” In this thesis, direct evidence is presented that the massive end of the red sequence is most rapidly building up when the universe was only 3 billion years old, with an influx of young quiescent galaxies that are almost non-existent over the past 8 billion years. These recently quenched galaxies have fundamentally different spectral shapes than older galaxies at the same redshifts, resulting in an increasing observed color scatter. With the accurate photometric redshifts and rest-frame colors of the novel NEWFIRM Medium-Band Survey presented herein, we can now break the degeneracies between age and dust to resolve the color scatter, and hence age spread, of the quiescent population over the past 11 billion years. Interestingly, the sizes of the most recently quenched galaxies are not larger, and possibly even smaller, than older galaxies at these early times. We additionally investigate the properties of star-forming galaxies, finding that galaxies show strong trends of increasing dust attenuation with stellar mass and a decreasing specific star formation rate. The discovery that the most recently quenched galaxies are compact with apparently little dust, while massive star-forming galaxies at the same epoch have heavily obscured star-formation and larger sizes, provides important clues for the physical process responsible for shutting down star formation in galaxies.

17 H O NO R S

Professor Debra Fischer has been chosen by the national fraternity Kappa Alpha Theta as one of the 2012-2013 Top 10 Outstanding Faculty Members.

Matt Giguere, GRD ‘15, was awarded a prestigious NASA Earth and Space Science Fellowship.

Nhung Ho, PhD ‘13 was awarded the Insight Data Science Fellowship, which is an incredibly com- petitive and prestigious 6-week program “bridging the gap between academy and data science.” The fellowship claims 100% job placement rates into companies like Facebook and Twitter.

Priya Natarajan has been elected to an honorary University Professorship in the Physics Department of the University of Delhi.

Pieter van Dokkum has been named the Sol Goldman Professor of Astronomy.

Meg Urry has succeeded David Helfand as President of the American Astronomical Society starting in June 2013. She will spend a year as incoming president, two years (June 2014-August 2015) as president, and a final year (August 2105-June 2016) as past-president. Urry also won the George van Biesbrock prize of the AAS for 2012, which was conferred in January 2013. She has also been named as a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) for “exemplary dedication to research and teaching in physics and astronomy, and for leadership in promoting the participation of women in the physics profession.”

18 In Memoriam: Suzanne Tourtellotte (1945-2013) Suzanne Tourtellotte, who After a number of years, she chose to leave Albertus Magnus and worked in the Department of As- join the Astronomy Department full time as a Research Scien- tronomy for many years as an As- tist. Her work was primarily associated with the YALO project, sociate Research Scientist, passed which subsequently grew into the SMARTS consortium, which away on June 20, 2013, after a has operated four telescopes in Chile since 1992. Her official task long and courageous battle with might be described as "data wrangler" - every one of the hundreds cancer. of CCD images obtained by SMARTS every day passed through her hands. I suspect that she visually inspected more CCD images Below is an excerpt from a let- than anyone else in the world during that time. She was relentless ter that Professor Charles Bailyn, in ferreting out anomalies in the data, no matter how small, and B.S. ‘81, wrote to the department the high quality of data obtained at SMARTS over the years is due upon her passing that expresses in large part to her insight and hard work. Every researcher who “Suzanne's remarkable contribu- has worked with data from the ANDICAM instrument owes her tions to the Yale Department of Astronomy and to the field a great debt. But she went far beyond simply managing the data, of astronomy more generally.” key though her contributions were in that area. She also took on significant roles in science analysis for projects led by Brad Schae- I first started working with Suzanne almost two decades ago. She fer and David Rabinowitz, among others. ADS lists 84 publica- came to us from her position as a Biology Professor at Albertus tions for her, including 11 refereed papers - a truly remarkable Magnus College, where she had been asked to teach an introduc- achievement for someone with no formal training in the field. tory course on astronomy. Typically for Suzanne, she was not sat- isfied to do a merely adequate job, which as an experienced teacher And through it all, her good sense and good cheer enlivened the she could easily have done. Rather, she came into our department SMARTS team, the department, and the motley crew of SMARTS and volunteered to do anything that needed to be done in exchange PIs with whom she interacted on a daily basis. She had a fierce for the opportunity to learn the subject in depth. Gus Oemler, commitment to excellence, but she also had the knack of leaven- who was department chair at the time, took her on as a research ing her determination with wisdom and humor, keeping all of us assistant for a time, and then she worked with me on a variety grounded in important ways. She also brought a remarkable range of projects. During those early years, she audited every 100 and of non-scientific talents into our midst - her artwork graces our de- 200 level course the department offered - several of us felt that she partment, and I personally treasure a number of small "arts-and- deserved to be awarded a PhD in Introductory Astronomy for her crafts" projects that she was kind enough to make for me. Toward efforts. She also TA-ed several courses during this time - her ex- the end, when her health began to fail and her suffering increased, perience and skill as a teacher of introductory courses was greater I never once heard her complain, and she maintained a remarkably than any five members of our department put together, and those upbeat attitude toward work, life and the Universe as a whole. of us who were fortunate enough to have her assistance learned a great deal about teaching from her wisdom and good sense. She will be greatly missed. Photo by V. Misenti.

Michele Dufault Endowment for Yale Women in Science Yale University is honored to announce that it has estab- programs and a mentor and source of inspiration to her lished the Michele Dufault Endowment for Yale Women many friends.” in Science. The $14 million fund, designated by the Yale Corporation within the University Endowment, has been The endowment will continue in perpetuity, and its in- named in memory of Michele Dufault, B.S. ‘11, who died come will be applied to benefit women pursuing study at in 2011 in a tragic accident at Sterling Chemistry Labora- Yale in science, technology, engineering, and mathemat- tory while pursuing her dreams as a scientist. ics (“STEM”). The endowment will fund undergradu- ate scholarships and graduate fellowships to women In announcing the University’s decision, Yale President studying at Yale, who will be known as Michele Dufault Richard C. Levin stated, “No one better exemplified the Scholars, as well as summer undergraduate research op- intellectual drive, curiosity, talent, and energy of young portunities; Yale-sponsored conferences and workshops women who will become leaders in science than Michele designed to encourage women to pursue study of STEM Dufault. Michele, a double major in physics and astron- disciplines; travel for students to attend other such con- omy, was an evangelist for physics and for women in ferences; and Yale-sponsored outreach programs in- science, an explorer of ideas, a talented researcher and tended to spark the interest of younger girls in STEM a leader of formidable capacity. She also was an accom- fields—girls who one day may follow in the academic plished saxophonist, a tireless organizer of events and and intellectual footsteps of Michele Dufault. This article was adapted from a Yale University press release from June 28, 2013.

19 A L U M N I

Martin Altschuler, ‘64 PhD writes, “When I left Yale Dept studying university-level Astronomy, Physics and Math. of Astronomy in 1965, I went to work for the High Altitude Nights are devoted to observing near-Earth asteroids and Observatory (NCAR), Boulder, CO. Worked there until computing their orbits. I’m pleased to note that three other 1976 doing 3D mapping of the solar coronal density distri- Yale astronomers have also been involved with SSP – two of bution and the 3D magnetic field density. Applied some of my classmates, Carol Williams and Myles Standish, and Mi- this work to 3D medicine, and from 1976 to 1981, worked on chael Faison, who’s currently on staff at Yale. I consider this 3D tomographic algorithms at SUNYAB (Buffalo, NY). In involvement to be the best thing I ever did professionally.” 1981, I was hired by the U of Pennsylvania School of Medi- cine, Dept of Radiation Oncology (Philadelphia, PA), where “Several evenings a week, I enjoy ballroom dancing. In ad- I helped develop algebraic optimization for 3D radiation dition, I make presentations at a UCLA discussion group on treatment planning. I also worked on robot vision by com- all that liberal arts stuff I managed to avoid during my En- bining laser pattern (active) projections with stereoscopic gineering-Astronomy training. Otherwise, I’m thoroughly (passive) imaging. After retirement in 2003, I worked on op- enjoying life as a bum.” timization algorithms for photodynamic treatment planning (optical red radiation inserted interstitially into the pros- Julian Palmore, ‘67 PhD writes, “I have been a member of tate—rod-like sources in a matrix pattern). Currently retrac- AIAA since 1955, first as a student member until 1960, then ing the twists and surprises of quantum theory. Regards to as a member. In 2010, after 50 years of membership, I became Yale Astronomy. I have great memories of my time there.” a Lifetime Member. My specialty is astrodynamics and ce- lestial mechanics. At the University of Illinois in Urbana, I Bill Jefferys, ‘65 PhD writes, “In my first year at Yale, Pro- teach courses in spaceflight and differential equations. My fessor Harlan Smith gave me the task of measuring some Yale studies in the Astronomy Department have contributed Harvard plates of quasars, a hot topic at the time.” greatly to my teaching and research career.”

Harlan invited Jefferys to follow him to the new Astronomy William Klepczynski, ‘68 PhD writes, “I am now com- Department at the University of Texas (UT), and in 1965, pletely retired from astronomy. I had been at the U.S. Na- Jefferys joined the faculty, where he remained until retire- val Observatory for 35 years where I retired as Director of ment in 2004. Other Yalies who came to UT at the time were the Time Service Department. At USNO, I worked on the the late Jim Douglas (faculty), Gerry Moseley, ‘69 PhD and U.S. Master Clock, keeping time for the United States and Arak Bozyan, ‘69 PhD. GPS. Then did contract work for the FAA as an employee of Innovative Solutions International, working on the Wide In 1977, Jefferys became the Hubble Space Telescope As- Area Augmentation System (WAAS) to GPS. Next, I became trometry Science Team Leader, working with Yale Professor a Fellow of American Association for the Advancement of Bill van Altena and the late Raynor Duncombe, ‘56 PhD. Science (AAAS) and Institute of Navigation (ION) and was assigned to the U.S. State Department Space and Advanced Jefferys writes, “In 2005, my wife, Sue, and I moved to a Technology (SAT) Section and worked on GPS agreements farm in Fayston, Vermont that my parents bought in 1957. with Europe, Brazil and Japan. After that, I became a con- I became an Adjunct Professor of Statistics at the Univer- tractor to the Institute of Defense Analyses (IDA) where I sity of Vermont and taught courses there from time to time, worked on the Military Critical Technology List (MCTL). mostly on Bayesian statistics and decision theory, which I Gloria and I live in the Annapolis, MD area and frequently had become interested in during my work on the Hubble visit our daughter and her children who live in Virginia. We Telescope.” spend our summers in the Portland, OR area where we visit our son and his children. Continuing the development of Dave Pierce, ‘66 PhD writes, “I recently retired from re- my programming skills which I learned at Yale, I now help search and teaching (on-campus & online). Teaching began maintain the web sites for the Friends of John Paul II Foun- at Vassar in 1966, while working at Yale, and ended in So. dation, Washington, D.C. Chapter, and the Chesapeake En- Calif. in 2013. Part time research was at JPL over several vironmental Protection Agency (CEPA).” decades. The most recent project was identifying asteroids which may visit someday.” Myles Standish, ‘68 PhD writes, “I’m now retired, living on Lake Keowee in South Carolina and enjoying the many “Since 1974, I’ve been involved with the Summer Science friends that Jeannine and I have made here. I still do oc- Program where gifted HS students devote six weeks to casional astronomy things - refereeing journal papers, giv-

20 A L U M N I

ing talks, providing various calculations and advice - and as well as a division focusing on 3(38) fiduciary services to am continually reminded of how much my Yale experience plans and their advisers. The bigger news comes from my contributed to my professional career. I was honored and wife’s business, a company that focuses on “marketing, me- humbled by the AAS Brouwer Award in 2000 and by the dia and more.” It is the repository of all my creative works NASA Distinguished Service Medal in 2008. After all, I was (who goes through a publisher nowadays, anyway?). The just doing something that I truly loved, providing planetary on-line industry news journal called FiduciaryNews.com has ephemerides to the spacecraft missions, working with the grown to nearly 6,000 subscribers and seems to have built a navigation teams, and interacting with colleagues around significant following within the retirement plan industry. It the world. Though I miss the old gang at JPL, I do not miss has led to small freelance project and a somewhat larger con- the California population problems. Life is good here in sulting project with a large media firm. In the meantime, I’ve Y’allville.” published two new books: 401k Fiduciary Solutions (guess what that’s about?) and 50 Hidden Gems of Greater Western Bill Gutowski, ‘76 PhD continues to teach and do research New York (a collection of personal essays describing inter- on climate processes and climate change in the Department esting tidbits regarding places, events and people from the of Geological and Atmospheric Sciences at Iowa State Uni- Greater Western New York Region). The first book seems to versity. He is a Lead Author for the newly released Climate be selling consistently according to Amazon and the latter Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis, the Fifth Assessment has led to plenty of speaking engagements at local service Report by Working Group 1 of the Intergovernmental Panel clubs, historical societies and other regional interest groups. on Climate Change. He is also helping to coordinate re- I’m working on several more books, including two to be gional climate research worldwide in various roles with the published this year. My hope is to ramp up my publication World Climate Research Programme. He was very happy schedule so I publish two books a year - one in the finance/ to visit Yale early in 2013, after many years away, to partici- investing area and one in some other area (including fiction). pate in a forum on The Integration of Climate Change and Perhaps I’ll have more to report for the next newsletter.” Infectious Disease Research, sponsored by the Yale Climate & Energy Institute. Michael West, ‘87 PhD is now Director of the Maria Mitch- ell Observatory (MMO) on the island of Nantucket, continu- John Giuliani, ‘80 PhD received his Ph.D. in theoretical as- ing Yale’s connection to the MMO that began more than trophysics under Prof. Richard Larson in 1980. After post- half a century ago with Dorrit Hoffleit. Prior to joining the graduate work at the Institute for Advanced Study and MMO, he spent six years as Head of ESO’s Office for Science Princeton University, he joined the Plasma Physics Division in Chile. at the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL). Since then, he has published in many areas of plasma physics, including high Taft Armandroff, Jr., ‘88 PhD was recently named the new altitude nuclear effects, laser target interactions, arc torch Director of the McDonald Observatory at the University of remediation, plasma processing, fluorescent and high inten- Texas at Austin (UT). He will also become a professor at UT. sity light sources, and KrF laser gas kinetics for fusion en- (Cont’d on p. 22.) ergy. Presently, he is Head of the Radiation Hydrodynamics Branch at NRL where he directs research activities on non- Giving to Yale Astronomy LTE ionization kinetics coupled to radiation transport and Z-pinch magnetohydrodynamics. The Astronomy Department pursues a wide array of Horace Smith, ‘80 PhD formally retired from the Michigan activities, ranging from public outreach with the Leitner State University Department of Physics and Astronomy last Family Observatory and Planetarium to creating inno- spring, but he has been allowed to maintain an office while vative instrumentation and obtaining observing nights in Emeritus status, and, aside from less teaching, things seem with the world’s largest telescopes. These represent as busy as before retirement. He writes, “Now I have to do an equally wide array of funding opportunities, and all the things that I told people I would do after I retired.” together with Yale’s Office of Development, we are committed to finding optimal matches between donors Christopher Carosa, ‘82 BS writes, “I continue to own and and initiatives. These include naming opportunities for operate a small boutique investment adviser. In addition to instruments, telescopes and programs. For more infor- offering private portfolio management to a modest num- mation, please contact Angelika Hofmann at ber of clients, we operate two (smallish) proprietary funds [email protected] or 203-436-8510.

21 Jamie M. Howard, ‘93 PhD writes, “I’m mid-way through in New York City, doing intellectual property transactions. my 21st year of teaching science and math and my 15th year Although not related to his work at the firm, Brendan has of teaching at the Albany Academies in Albany, NY. We been writing about space law, and a paper of his that ad- even have an introductory astronomy class this year and a dresses issues of liability and damage caused by outer space junior student who wants to do astronomy research over the activities will be published in the International Institute of upcoming summer and during his senior year. I consider Space Law’s 2013 Proceedings of the Colloquium on the Law of myself very fortunate to get paid to do something I find in- Outer Space. credibly enjoyable and rewarding, and I often find myself looking back to the examples of the faculty who taught me. Meredith Hughes, ‘05 BS writes, “I’ve just finished my first Other than that, I work at spending as much free time as I year as an assistant professor of astronomy at Wesleyan Uni- can in the great outdoors and don’t spend as much time as versity. I love my new job, particularly teaching Wesleyan’s I’d like to keeping in touch with some of my former class- clever and creative students. Last summer, Geir Helleloid mates.” and I got married in the company of our family and close friends in Rhode Island.” Thomas Lydon, ‘93 PhD writes, “I am still working as a doc- tor in New Hampshire. Gave a talk at Dartmouth on man- Katherine Kornei, ‘06 BS is working as a space science edu- aging chest pain at small hospitals. Recently elected as a cator and writer. She designs classes for the Oregon Mu- Fellow of the American College of Emergency Physicians. I seum of Science & Industry, and she helped to write content had a pleasant discussion with Dr. Paul Charbonneau on the for the Sun Science smart phone and tablet application with latest advances in solar convection. But the big news is that the Lawrence Hall of Science. She also edits research manu- after a lifetime of renting, I have purchased a home [in Rye, scripts and writes astronomy-related articles for newspa- NH]. Visit me on the beach anytime.” pers, observatories, and astronomy clubs.

Ray Jayawardhana, ‘94 BS has recently been appointed Hannah Krug, ‘07 BS earned her Ph.D. this summer from Dean of the Faculty of Science at York University. He will the University of Maryland (thesis: Neutral Gas Outflows and serve a five year term commencing July 1, 2014. Prior to Inflows in Local AGN and High-z Lyman-alpha Emitters in COS- his appointment at the University of Toronto in 2004, where MOS). She decided to pursue a career in secondary educa- he is currently on the Faculty, he held an appointment at tion, so she began teaching upper-level math at the Holton- the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He has co-authored Arms School in Maryland this Fall. She writes, “I include close to 100 scholarly articles in his field, and is a co-editor astronomical examples where I can and the girls love it! I of two books, Star Formation at High Angular Resolution and am thrilled with my choice of career and am forever indebt- Young Stars Near Earth: Progress and Prospects. He is the re- ed to Yale Astronomy for helping put me on this path!” cipient of a number of awards and honors, including the Royal Society of Canada’s Rutherford Medal and the Steacie Eric Murphy, ‘07 PhD is now on the scientific research staff Prize for Natural Sciences. at Caltech and recently had a proposal accepted to use Jayawardhana enjoys promoting the sciences with the me- nearly 200 hrs on the VLA to conduct a deep survey of the dia, government, the public, and external bodies. He is Frontier Fields. These are survey fields centered on strong frequently featured in various radio, television and print lensing clusters for which HST and Spitzer have both spent media venues speaking to current issues in astronomy, and thousands of hours to detect galaxies at very high redshifts. is the author of three popular books: Neutrino Hunters: The Thrilling Chase for a Ghostly Particle to Unlock the Secrets of the Nicole Thom, ‘10 BS finished her Master’s degree in 2012 in Universe, Strange New Worlds: The Search for Alien Planets and Space Studies at the University of North Dakota. In October Life Beyond Our Solar System, and Star Factories: The Birth of 2013, she began working as a support scientist at the Har- Stars and Planets. vard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, MA. On a non-work-related note, she got married to Brad After 11 years working at Centro de Investigaciones de As- Schanche in May of 2013 in North Dakota. tronomía (Venezuela), Kathy Vivas, ‘02 PhD took a new job as Assistant Astronomer at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Ob- James Kim, ‘11 BS writes, “After graduating from Yale, I servatory (CTIO) in La Serena, Chile. She is now part of the spent a couple years teaching at an inner-city high school in support team of the Dark Energy Camera (DECam) installed Providence, RI. Although I taught math, I often incorporat- at the 4m Blanco telescope. Kathy is using DECam to inves- ed astronomy and physics in my classroom, and through my tigate the faint population of variable stars in nearby dwarf mentorship, one of my former students was able to enroll at spheroidal galaxies. She also continues collaborating with Rhode Island College as a prospective physics major. Cur- Yale professor Bob Zinn on issues related with RR Lyrae rently, I serve as the Chief Academic Officer of 12+, a Phil- stars in the halo of the Milky Way. adelphia-based college access non-profit that has achieved an eight-fold increase in college-going rate at its partner Brendan Cohen, ‘05 BA recently started working as an as- schools and has recently been awarded a $5,000 social in- sociate at the law firm of Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton novation grant to scale up its model.”

22 Laura Kreidberg, ‘11 BS is in her third year of grad school at U. Chicago, working on exoplanets. She recently published a paper in Nature on the discovery of clouds in the atmo- STARS FORM AT YALE sphere of the super-Earth exoplanet GJ 1214b. This observa- tion was the first of its kind sensitive to an Earth-like atmo- About 100 astronomers, including several Yale alumni, spheric composition. She writes, “We’re making big strides travelled to New Haven in October 2012 for the Frontiers in the direction of characterizing an Earth-size planet!” in Star Formation conference. Below are some pictures from the event. See article, p. 24, for more. Jonathan Richardson, ‘11 BS is in his third year of gradu- ate study at the University of Chicago, working with Profs. Stephan Meyer and Craig Hogan. As a member of the Fer- milab Holometer, a high-precision laser interferometry ex- periment, he is seeking to detect and characterize the quan- tum nature of space-time on very small scales. Initial science runs are on-track to begin in early spring 2014.

Rachel Bezanson, ‘13 PhD is now at the University of Ari- zona as a Hubble fellow, living in Tucson and blissfully avoiding all polar vortices (and really cold winter weather in general).

Yale Astronomy is now on Twitter! Follow us @YaleAstronomy!

23 Yale University Nonprofit Org. Department of Astronomy U.S. Postage P.O. Box 208101 PAID New Haven, CT 06520-8101 New Haven, CT Return Service Requested Permit No. 526

Yale Astronomy hosts conference in honor of Dr. Richard Larson On October 26 and 27, 2012, about 100 astronomers from across the world de- scended upon Yale for the Frontiers in Star Formation Conference in honor of the retirement of Professor Richard Larson. The program included two days of talks from both observers and theorists in the field of star formation, at all cosmic scales, discussing the latest discoveries and the exciting research that will be con- ducted in the near future.

The program was divided into four sessions: The First Stars, The Heydays of Cosmic Star Forma- tion (SF at z~2-3), Towards a Complete Picture of Galactic Star Formation, and Bridging the Gap between Galactic and Extra-Ga- lactic Star Formation. Each ses- sion had two review talks and an average of 4 additional “targeted” talks. There was also a poster session with 16 posters.

The event was held at Yale’s Luce Hall, with a conference banquet at Amarante’s Sea Cliff on the coast of New Haven.

The program, talks and photos from the events can be seen on the conference website below: http://www.astro.yale.edu/sf_frontiers/index.htm. Photos by P. Coppi and V. Misenti.

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